- I used to use them very frequently. It took noticing that I was parenthesizing the second half of almost every sentence I wrote (to add a bit more info, like this), to make me go back and evaluate if I could remove them and replace with commas, or just break the sentence. I found that it was possible on almost all cases. Since then, I started doing this automatically as I started writing a "(" and then I kind of naturally stopped using parentheses so much. It was a bad habit that I somehow formed and found a means to self-correct.
- One of my pet peeves is people opening a parenthesis and never closing it. It's like my brain pushes the parenthetical into a stack and when I get to the end of the paragraph it throws an error.
I definitely overuse parenthesis and I haven't found a way to rid myself of the habit (as I managed to mostly rid myself of the habit of using semi-colons).
- The one place where I find parenthesis really jarring is in the middle of quotes. I just can't wrap my head around something like
> "I'm sending (via email) an encrypted message", Alice said to Bob
Especially in a book that's been supposedly copy edited. Em dashes or commas or just a plain run-on sentences feel much more appropriate for the general lack of structure in real speech.
- I don't like the two examples of parenthesis used in the title & subtitle of this piece, where they put wonderful and perfect in parentheses before a noun phrase.
Putting adjectives in parentheses before a noun (phrase) is, yes, a useful device but those adjectives should usually be words that give more (but not necessary) information, rather than purely subjective qualifiers such as the two that the author uses. I know they're probably being a bit tongue in cheek but it still grates a little that these were the two examples they led with.
- Well, you’re getting more information about the author’s subjective opinion (which they may have deemed unnecessary to include in the main, non-parenthesised text).
- I don't know why but I seem to use more parenthesis (even if I should be using commas).
- I try not to use parentheses, favoring other ways of interleaving thoughts - like this - unless I feel a stray idea deserves mentioning (like so). What's disgraceful that I'd never do myself, but certainly sympathetic to the motive, are double-parentheses (likely from Lispers (who think in nested lists)).
- "He was certainly a flamboyantly creative writer and inspired teacher; yet one can take him seriously here: “Pricks” performed “tricks” as punctuation became a vehicle to think about the technological revolutions of the time, gender relationships, and literary genres reflecting social and historical concerns like kingship or geographical exploration."
absolute trainwreck.
- No Amount of Grammatical Feats Will Make You Look Smart If You Use Word Capitalization.
- I just had thw thought: aren't parentheses just punctuation denoting an inline footnote?
- In legal writing, an inline footnote begins with the word "see" in italics, e.g.,"football-related prayer in public schools is now permitted,see,Kennedy v. Bremerton School Dist., 597 U.S.507 (2022)." It's just as easy to make this a footnote but some judges have objected to "excessive" footnotes in legal submissions. Keeping them inline avoids this criticism.
ps On another note, AI legal hallucinations are a solved computing problem. Either a cite or case is contained in the closed universe of materials or it isn't--a simple binary question. Problem is, thos with control of the materials, starting with 1 Dallas (which predates the United States) won't share the list with AI companies.
pps This forum deletes unicode. The word see was gobbled from the original text.
- Five comments here write "parenthesis" where they mean "parentheses" ... weird.
- And not a single mention of Lisp? Tsk.
- Came for comments with an unreasonable amount of parenthesis; not disappointed.
- Now having a revival because AI killed the em dash.
35 points by pseudolus 10 hours ago | 20 comments